WITH her bright red hair, loud clothing and a body covered with tattoos and piercings, Catra Corbett wouldn’t look out of place at a rave.

But the 50-year-old has been there and done that, and she’s now replaced alcoholism and a destructive meth habit with a passion for extreme ultra-running.

She’s as hardcore as she’s ever been, having run more than 250 ultra-marathons (any race of more than 42 kilometres). She is one of only four people in the world to have run 100 miles (160km) more than 100 times.

The Californian is honest about her motivations, admitting that she “needed a new addiction”. Corbett has now been clean and sober for almost 20 years, and she’s now a raw vegan and fruitarian, starting work at Whole Foods. “Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go,” reads her Facebook page, which is filled with photos of her completing the most intense tests of endurance on the planet, often in blazing heat or freezing cold temperatures.

And she looks on top of the world as she does it, dressed in her signature neon running skirts, armbands, spray-painted running shoes, scarfs, visors and polarised sunglasses.

The 50-year-old has run 250 ultra-marathons.

She recently completed a 50k with her mini dachshund, Truman.

A health junkie, she is now also a raw vegan.

The alternative music fan is one of many addicts who has taken up ultra-running.

It was the night she spent in jail, after her arrest for selling meth, that was her turning point, prompting her to start running and gradually become one of the icons of the sport.

Her dog Truman is equally tough, running a 50km last month. “I’m pretty sure he may be the first mini dachshund who has run that far,” she wrote on her blog, Dirt Diva.

There’s something special about the number 50 for Corbett. On her 50th birthday last December, she ran for 50 hours. She now has 50 tattoos, which took more than 50 hours in the chair, plus 25 piercings.

She runs 130km a week, and has clocked up 128,000km since she took up running in 1996.

Corbett, who loves goth, punk, techno and alternative music, is a “fast packer”, meaning she carries her supplies with her as she runs, sleeps where she stops, and getting back on the trail when she wakes up.

She’s always pushing herself to achieve more, filling her time away from ultra-running with rock-climbing, hiking and crossfit. In a blog post from April, entitled “Sometimes you have to let life turn you upside down, so you can learn how to live, right side up”, she recounts running 200 miles (321km) solo in the Sunol wilderness in 79 hours, 29 minutes.

In a post from earlier the same month, she writes about having to drop down from a 160km course to “just” a 24-hour run because of a bladder infection, nausea and diarrhoea. “I was first in the relentless 24-hour race 75 miles. I’ll take it,” she wrote.

She has broken toes, pulled her hamstrings and put huge strain on her body, but her strength of mind always carries her through. determined throughout. Ultra-marathons are her therapy, and she says she outruns her demons every time.

She’s been clean for almost 20 years.

Catra Corbett was addicted to class-A drugs and alcohol.

Is this the only high that can compare to class-A drugs?

She’s one of just four people in the world who have run 100 miles (160km) 100 times.Source:Facebook

A night in jail turned her life around.Source:Facebook

Corbett isn’t alone in substituting hard exercise for hard drugs: it’s an exchange that seems to make sense for many former addicts.

Brian Remington, a former meth addict and alcoholic from Denver, gave up drugs and started working out with his son after nearly losing an arm in a motorbike accident. Despite the internal damage wrought by drugs and the fractures from the crash, he has run 37 half-marathons, six marathons and three ultra-marathons, The Denver Post reported.

Exercise junkie Tarquin Cooper wrote in the UK Daily Telegraph about how many addicts he met when completing the 150-mile Marathon des Sables across the Sahara desert, from a once-overweight alcoholic who has 619 marathons under his belt, to a former anorexic who broke the female John o’Groats to Land’s End running record in the UK, covering 1350km in 12 days and 15 hours. “It is an addiction,” the 47-year-old told Cooper. “But it’s a healthy one.”

It seems ultra-running is the only high that can compete with class-A drugs.